Most mercy killings occur when a patient is in a persistent vegetative state, with no hope of recovery, and family members or guardians request that artificial life support be removed.
Often, court orders are required to have this done.
Frequently, patients are victims of accidents or crime, such as David Heffer, Tony Bland, Mark Weaver, and Karen Eickholdt.
Doctors did not need court permission to remove Nancy Gamble's life support when the paralyzed Lou Gehrig's patient requested it herself.
Sometimes, family members or loved ones feel compelled to take matters into their own hands.
The father of 15-month old Samuel Linares, comatose since swallowing a balloon, held a gun on a nurse, disconnected his respirator, and held him until he died.
Steven Jenkins, a terminally ill AIDS patient, was shot by a friend.
William Ward, who suffered from possibly cancerous tumors and very poor health, was smothered by his brother Delbert.
While Virginia Harper slept, her husband put a plastic bag over her head and secured it with rubber bands, after the advanced cancer sufferer failed in her suicide attempt.
Roswell Gilbert shot his wife Emily, who suffered Alzheimer's and osteoporosis.
Active euthanasia, like Dr. Kevorkian's assisting Alzheimer's sufferer Janet Adkins to use his suicide device, is considered immoral by some ethicists and illegal by some states.
Hospital nurses were arrested in Austria for killing patients, some of whom were not terminally ill, with lethal injections.
A German nurse was convicted of manslaughter and mercy killing in a similar case.
